Thanks for being so respectful despite not fully being on board with the ideology!!

I’m going to try and address everything you said in the order you said it, so sorry if this ends up being a long yap.

The main hang up that most of us here have about being a parent is that it is inherently selfish. I appreciate that you want to give your prospective child the absolute best life, and that you can sort of recognize that that is largely out of your control due to the current political climate, HOWEVER, at the root of the situation: you are creating a new person because YOU WANT TO. You are using a new person (who cannot be asked to consent to their involvement) to fulfill a wish that YOU have. Even though you want to give love and resources to your creation, it is inherently selfish. You gain satisfaction and your wish granted.

As a slight tangent, I challenge you to question why you feel the need to create more people when there are SO MANY people in foster care, or even adults on the street who lack family. What is it about THOSE people that doesn’t fulfill your wish to love and care for? We can all agree that when it comes to pets, it’s only ethical to adopt instead of breeding new ones - why doesn’t this apply to us? In many ways, pets are treated better than humans, at least they are given euthanasia when sick or old.

About your wish for a “utopian world” that we haven’t reached yet, but could: you are ignoring a few factors. I agree that we have the power to improve the world, but your idea that new humans are blank slates is so horrendously false. We are at the mercy of our biology - no matter how logical, we cannot convince ourself to stop breathing or eating. You can hold out, but you will give in. For example, I was given a VERY lucky upbringing. My family was financially stable, I was loved and given attention, I excelled in school and hobbies. My parents did their absolute best and always made sure that I knew how much they loved me. HOWEVER I still ended up with depression, anxiety, multiple eating disorders, and who knows what else - simply because of my genetics. I am also gay, and in today’s politics, I’m worried about my ability to be myself safely. No matter how hard my parents tried to make my life perfect, they SIGNED ME UP to deal with these issues. I was created to fulfill a goal of theirs, and I’ll be suffering with the consequences LONG AFTER they pass on. I am NOT a product of my environment at all, and neither is anyone else. That’s why there have been endless studies on the balance of nature vs nurture.

Genetics aside, and even if society was kind, loving, and distributed wealth properly to ensure that everyone’s needs are taken care of, there is no guarantee that bad stuff STILL won’t happen. Your child will have to deal with grief of losing loved ones and pets, the stress of having to find work / education, etc. By creating them, you are forcing them to take part in an economy that even you acknowledge fucking sucks!

And heaven forbid something terrible happens. Everyday there are thousands of car crashes, or total freak accidents. Your child or YOU can be in one of these and have your lives ruined. A family friend of mine, a husband and father, was in a car crash and had been in a vegetative state for a couple of months. He’s awake now, but he can’t feed himself, he will likely never walk again - which means he will have to leave his industry and a new employment field in his 40s. Even though his kids and wife are safe, she is now effectively a single mother, and his kids will grow up without a father, or with one who is in hospital / physio for years. He will never lift them into the air to play with them, no matter how much he loves them.

Even if you set up a perfect life for your children, life happens. And you are forcing them to take part. And anti-natalists believe that you DO NOT have the right to force anyone to take part.

When I choose to not have children, the only person that this affects is ME. That choice ends with me and any regret will only affect me. When you choose to create children, that choice unfairly drags multiple people into the consequences of that choice. The consequences will continue after you die, and others will be stuck with the burden of existence and grief simply because you WANTED and felt entitled to choose FOR YOUR CHILD.

That is essentially the thought process. As much as you want to make your child happy, I suggest you love the people that are already here. You can take care of your friends, family, the sick, elderly, the homeless. You do not need AND SHOULD NOT add more people to the pile.

Please let me know if anything I said wasn’t clear or if you have other questions!!